Trout Lake Report: Closemouthed

It's windy, then calm. The weather is cool, and the hatches are impressive. But the fish are strangely silent.

Saturn, Mars, Antares (top to bottom)

You watch the planets align and decide to keep your mouth closed about the fact that you couldn't coax a single fish to open theirs.

Look Up Alert

All five bright planets will appear together in the morning sky from about January 20 to February 20, 2016. That hasn’t happened since 2005.

Read more.

Fifteen Minutes

I submitted three of my photos of the conjunction on Friday evening to Earthsky, one of my favorite science sites. What do you know, they posted one of them.

But check out the caption.

Jim Yaussy submitted this photo to EarthSky.org from Albright, Washington.

I start out the evening as an unknown, and now I have a town in Washington named after me.

To see more photos on Earthsky, click HERE.

Rocky Ford Creek Report: Catch of the Day

It's another beautiful afternoon at Rocky Ford Creek. The sun is in and out of scudding clouds. It's almost hot when it's out, and refreshingly cool when it's hidden.

I'm hoping to get some photos of the conjunction of Venus, Mars, and the new moon after sunset. My DSLR camera and tripod are in the truck. But as the afternoon rolls on the clouds roll in.

Meanwhile I just fish. I spend lots of time with an indicator on, and I pick up four or five youngsters on scuds and various nymphs. (I get no takes on a bloodworm.)

Robins have now joined the list of Spring birds, and more Great Blue Herons have come. A male Marsh Hawk--ghostly white--patrols the opposite bank. He hits the brakes and drops like a stone. I hear a commotion in the cattails, and he rises with a dark shape in his talons and heads for a perch in the rocks. Mallards are here, and a variety of Grebes, all paired up and engaged in courtship. I wonder when the Pelicans will arrive.

I catch a better fish on a nondescript nymph as I'm stripping it in for a change of flies. It's a very pretty fish.

Each time I've been here in the past few weeks I hear sounds below my feet. The banks are riddled with Muskrat tunnels, and I often see them paddling in and out. Now I'm also hearing them gnawing away at their domain, creating even more passageways.

It seems like I just got here, but the light is going. I try a scud again--I've gotten the most attention with that fly--and sure enough, I hook a good fish. I work it in carefully and have the net in my hand when it breaks off. So it goes.

I clip off the indicator and tie on a stimulator and throw it around until it's time to go. I watch Great Blues circle overhead against the darkening clouds and figure someone else will have to take photos of the celestial show. I'm sorry to have to miss it.

The truck is packed. I start the engine, and pour some coffee. I'm about to shift into gear when a glint of moonlight flickers out of the shifting clouds. I study the sky critically. It looks like the clouds may break up enough for a good view.

I shut the engine off, grab my DSLR and climb out. Yes, it's going to happen. I set up the tripod as quickly as I can and get ready. And I get my shot.

It's the catch of the day.

Conjunction: Venus, Mars, and New Moon

I stayed in the deserted parking lot at Rocky Ford Creek for almost an hour taking many photos. These are two more of my favorites. What a show!

Heads Up: Venus, Mars, and Crescent Moon

This is why I'd rather live in this universe than any other. Venus and Mars have been spectacular the past few evenings. And now the newborn crescent moon will join them.

This is a bona fide phenomenon. Hope you can check it out where you live. I'm planning to be at Rocky Ford Creek on the evening of the 20th, and there's a good chance it will be clear. If it is, I'll be soaking it all in.

Earthsky has this to say about this celestial event:

The planets Mars and Venus are about to be at their closest in our sky since 2008. They won’t be closer until 2017! Their nearest point is Saturday, but tonight – February 19, 2015 – you’ll find these two planets in the west after sunset, nearly as close as they will be then. Venus is the much brighter one. What’s more, the young moon is now returning to the west after sunset. And that means we’re about to have some incredible scenes in the western, twilight sky. Friday night’s sky scene will be especially grand.

Although the new moon fell yesterday, February 18, we still expect some observant people in the Northern Hemisphere – especially in North America – to catch the whisker-thin young crescent moon after sunset Thursday evening. Look westward, beneath Venus – the brightest planet and bright evening “star” – and near the horizon, starting an hour or less after sunset. Binoculars may be helpful!

It’ll be harder, though not impossible, to catch an even thinner lunar crescent from northerly latitudes in Europe – and harder yet at northerly latitudes in Asia. We expect few, if any, observers at temperate latitudes in the Southern Hemisphere to spot the young moon after sunset February 19. We tell you why later.

Whatever you do, just start watching the western twilight sky. Set a reminder on your phone if need be. The planets and moon won’t be up for long after sunset. And the views will be spectacular from now through Saturday night!

Rocky Ford Creek Report: First Trip of February

I drive back south into the ice age landscape of Rocky Ford Creek. The last leg takes you through glacial rubble to the creek tucked in at the base of the ancient moraine ridge.

It's the first trip of February. Like the glass half full or half empty, February is either the last month of Winter or the first month of Spring, depending on your attitude.

For me it's the latter, a month of nascent beginnings. Perhaps that's because it's the month of my birth. The birthstone is amethyst, the "stone of royalty," representing "power."

I prefer to think of it as the power of life to overcome darkness and death. Life has been doing that all winter long, but now, this month, you can begin to witness it in the shifting of the light, hear it in the modulation of bird songs, and feel it in the exhalation of the waking earth.

There are more ducks on the water. Red-winged blackbirds are still singing, and meadowlarks outdo them, trilling their hearts out. Crows and ravens call out to the world from high overhead, and a Great blue heron cronks from somewhere deep in the cattails.

I fish hard, throwing a variety of flies, topwater and subsurface. Countless times fish respond with everything just short of a hookup. It's one of those days that feels like reading a good book: you just keep turning the pages eager to find out how the story will end.

Meanwhile the breeze pushes the clouds over the ridge like an aerial glacier, and the long-missed sun bathes the earth with color.

And with that an amethyst trout comes up under my drifting stimulator and attempts to make off with it.

It isn't long--or it doesn't seem long--before the sun sinks behind a new encroaching bank of clouds, and the sky itself takes on an amethyst hue.

I fish awhile longer, hoping for the ending of the story in which I catch another large trout. But I have already reached the end of the story. I make my way through the cattails back to the truck.

It's almost dark by the time I'm ready to go. I'm gratified to observe that it's almost 6 o'clock. Somehow, all at once, I have received the gift of an extra hour on the water.

I drive through the glacial plain toward the highway that will take me home. Ahead of me Venus glitters brilliantly in the western sky, and above it, like a pale shadow, Mars.

Turning north at the highway I'm suddenly aware of a bright glow over the ridge to my right. I drive on until I reach the parking area at Dry Falls, the deep hole in the ground made by the monumental waterfall created when an ancient ice dam gave way, draining a Montana-sized inland sea right through where I'm standing, forming the Grand Coulee.

I get out of the truck to watch for a moment as the full moon rises over the city of Grand Coulee, accompanied by the largest planet of them all, Jupiter.

The February full moon, in native american tradition, is called the Snow Moon, because of the heavy snows that can come without warning at this time of winter; or the Hunger Moon, because of the difficulty of hunting in the deep snows, and the depletion of other food stores after a long winter.

It could snow tomorrow (it's supposed to rain) and by this time of the long winter my stores of patience are giving way to cabin fever. But I'd still prefer--and that's why I'd prefer--to think of this full moon as the First Full Moon of Spring.

Bad Moon Rising

Just dropped over to EarthSky. Glad I did. Big news!

There will be a total eclipse of the full moon tonight, April 14 - 15. Mars, the Red Planet, is the closest and brightest in 6 years, and will be visible near the red moon. Look for the star Spica, too.

This is known as a Blood Moon. Some people, of a particular religious or superstitious bent, believe this moon, and the three other Blood Moons occurring in 2014 and 2015--four in a row--are signs of the Apocalypse. Yes, that Apocalypse.

If you insist on getting all worked up about that, fine. Go for it. But if you have an open mind and are interested in learning more, you might find this link helpful:

A Christian Astronomer Talks About Blood Moons

I've already said on this blog that I'm a believer. And I believe that the End of the World is the Creator's department. I hope to be ready, whenever it is.

Meanwhile, I will be praying. I'll be praying that the skies are clear over north central Washington State tonight.

From "Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman

Earth, Jupiter, and Venus, seen from Mars.

I do not know what is untried and afterward;

But I know it will in its turn prove sufficient, and cannot fail.
Each who passes is consider'd--each who stops is consider'd--
          not a single one can it fail
Nor anything in the myriads of spheres--nor one of the myriads
          of myriads that inhabit them...

. . . . . . . . . . . .

I open my scuttle at night and see the far-sprinked systems,
And all I see, multiplied as high as I can cipher, edge but the rim
          of the farther systems.
Wider and wider they spread, expanding, always expanding,
Outward and outward, and forever outward.
My sun has his sun, and round him obediently wheels,
He joins with his partners, a group of superior circuit,
And greater sets follow, making specks of the greatest inside them.
There is no stoppage, and never can be stoppage;
If I, you, and the worlds, and all beneath or upon their surfaces,
          were at this moment reduced back to a pallid float, it would not
          avail in the long run;
We should surely bring up again where we now stand,
And as surely go as much farther--and then farther and farther.
A few quadrillions of eras, a few octillions of cubic leagues, do not
          hazard the span, or make it impatient;
They are but parts--anything is but a part.
See ever so far, there is limitless space outside of that;
Count ever so much, there is limitless time around that.

. . . . . . . . . . . .

This day before dawn I ascended a hill, and look'd at the crowded
          heaven,
And I said to my Spirit, When we become the enfolders of those
          orbs, and the pleasure and knowledge of everything in them,
          shall we be fill'd and satisfied then?
And my Spirit said, No, we but level that lift, to pass and continue
          beyond.

. . . . . . . . . . . . 

And I say to any man or woman, Let your soul stand cool and
          composed before a million universes.

From "Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 1855.

Signs of Cabin Fever: This Post

This photo was released recently. It shows what scientists believe may have been a lake on Mars. Looks like a lake to me.

This view of layered rocks on the floor of McLaughlin Crater shows sedimentary rocks that contain spectroscopic evidence for minerals formed through interaction with water. The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter recorded the image. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona.

Someone even claimed that this photo shows petrified fish on Mars. Maybe they were scientists, too. Or maybe not.

It's fun to think about, though, fishing on Mars. But alas, we're a few millenia too late. Or are we?

I got real excited when I saw this headline.

But, after a little thought, I realized that's ridiculous.

No, I'm pretty sure there aren't fish on Mars---yet.

So here's what we need to do. Just get the Army Corps of Engineers up there. If there's water in the planet's core they'll damn well find it, and, with a shitload of heavy equipment and high-powered explosives, before you know it they'll transform Mars from the barren planet on the right to the Fisherman's Paradise on the left.

Yep, from this...

To this.

Very soon the MDFW (Mars Department of Fish and Wildlife) would have hatcheries going. We could raise millions of stockers from some of earth's more exotic species. These, for example, just scream "Mars."

And there's always the possibility of retrieving DNA and cloning actual Martian species. Imagine wading into this lovely little Martian canal...

And hooking up on one of these Martian Steelhead.

SIGN ME UP!

The entire fly fishing industry would be rejuvenated as it rushes to develop the specialized gear for the Martian fishery.

Fly tiers would go nuts coming up with strange new "Space Flies."

And once the fish are there and you're all geared up, OK, time for a "road trip!" Yeah, it would take a little longer to get there. You'd need more than bad coffee, smokes, and junk food to keep you going.

What's not to like? So get ready. Make your plans. It will soon be time to conquer Mars!

But you know, I bet even there you'll just be wading in and shaking out your line when this asshole comes along and tells you to get the hell off his land.